The Norbury
Chronicle"Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed." (Mark 4:22)
The Dancing Men Return
We recently discovered that Åge Rieck Sørensen extrapolated the seventeen known characters into a full cipher alphabet, plus the flag for a space, but had trouble downloading the font based on it. It can however be approximated as:
\o/ \o/ \o \o \o/ \o o/ _o_ \o/ o/ o_| o/ \o/ \o \o \o/ \o |_o_| \o/ \/ \o o/ o/ \o o/ o/
| | | |_ _| | | | |_ _| <| |_ _| | |_ | _| | |_ | |_ _| _| | | |_
][ /\ ] ] [ [ <> /\ <> ] ] [ <> ] [ ] [ /\ ] [ <> [ <> ] [ /o\ ] [ ] [ /\ <> ]
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
This is a bit different from our cryptanalysis back in issue 3 (January '89). In this emoticon-like approximation ours would have:
\o \/ \o/ \o/ \o o_| |_o |_o_| |_o_| |_o_| o/ \o o/
| | | | |> | |> | |_ | | | |
/> /o /\ /> <> <> <> <[ ] [ ][ /\ /\ <\
A D E F J K L Q S U W X Z
We did have X the same as Sørensen, but figured more symmetry and more bent limbs into our analysis. Considering that the number of combinations of the two head positions, seven right arm positions ( \, and none), seven left arm positions, five right leg positions, and five left leg positions, there are 2450 different possible dancing men figures.
Holmes' Family
We also have received a mysterious postcard -- signed only "M" (Moriarty again perhaps?) -- which had the brief message: "I presume that you are aware that it has been shown that Sherlock Holmes was the father of Tarzan." and so have been researching Sherlock Holmes' posted genealogies -- primarily "Watching the Detectives or The Family Tree of Sherlock Holmes" by Brad Mengel, Sherlock Holmes by S. Baring-Gould, "Holmeses of Baker Street" by Basil Mitchell, Tarzan Alive by Philip José Farmer.
We found that the eighth duke of Greystoke John "Tarzan" Clayton is actually Holmes' first cousin once removed. (He is, incidentally, my own half 31st cousin six times removed and Watson -- via the Mackenzies -- is my 6th cousin five times removed, so I'm more a chronicler than a detective.) Some of his more illustrious relatives are:
Aaron (90th great grandfather),
Abraham (96th great grandfather)
Prof. Maximilian "Slider" Arturo (3rd cousin),
Marcus Aurelius (42nd great grandfather),
“Shrinking” Violet Holmes Beauregard (niece),
Cordwainer Bird (3rd cousin once removed),
Sir Percy "The Laughing Cavalier" Blakeney (7th great grandfather)
Percy "The Scarlet Pimpernel" Blakeney (3rd great grandfather),
Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte (3rd cousin once removed),
"Doc" Elliot L. Brown (2nd cousin),
Frank Cannon (grandnephew),
Prof. George Edward Challenger (great granduncle in The Lost World),
Micah Clarke (4th great grandfather),
Roman Emperor Constanius (39th great grandfather)
Lara "Tomb Rider" Croft (2nd great grand niece),
Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (1st cousin once removed 1st chronicled in The Strand by H.C. McNeile),
William "Ace" Drummond (1st cousin once removed)
Inspector Gideon Fell (1st cousin once removed),
Gerald "Nighthawk" Frost (3rd cousin),
William "Jack" Frost (3rd cousin once removed),
Richard "Robin" Grayson (3rd great grandson),
Herod the Great (49th great grandfather),
Ludwig Horace Holly (1st cousin once removed),
Creighton “X Esquire” Holmes (grandson),
Raffles Holmes (son),
Horatio Hornblower (1st cousin three times removed),
Barnaby Jones, P. I. (great grandnephew),
Frederick “Freddy” Jones (2nd great grandnephew),
Peerless Jones (great grandnephew-in-law),
Prof. Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. (half 3rd cousin once removed),
Martin "Merlin" Jones (2nd great grandnephew in "Monkey's Uncle"),
James Tiberius Kirk (4th cousin twelve times removed),
Michael "Lone Wolf" Langard (3rd cousin once removed),
Angus MacGyver (1st cousin three times removed),
John “The Baron” Mannering (grandson),
Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair (1st cousin 4 times removed),
Cormac MacAilill O'Dunlaige (39th great grandfather),
Solar Pons (1st cousin twice removed),
Porthos (7th great grandfather),
Bruce Hagen “Capt. Midnight” Rassendyll (3rd cousin),
Kent Allard “The Shadow” Rassendyll (2nd cousin once removed),
Richard "Toff" Rollinson (3rd cousin once removed),
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (half 13th cousin eighteen times removed),
St. Helena (39th great grandmother),
St. Louis (half 13th cousin eighteen times removed),
St. Vladimir (half 5th cousin twenty-six times removed),
Denis Nayland Smith (nephew, nemesis of Fu Manchu),
John "Continental Op" Smith (nephew),
John "Hannibal" Smith (grandnephew),
Leiko "The Black Lotus" Smith (great grandniece),
Prof. Horatio "Pimpernel" Smith (grandnephew),
Sam Spade (5th cousin twice removed)
Spock (16th great grandson)
Timothy "Tiger" Standish (1st cousin twice removed),
Simon "The Saint" Templar (3rd cousin once removed),
Roman Emperor Theodosius (39th great grandfather),
Kilgore Trout (5th cousin twice removed),
Richard “The Spider” Wentworth, Sr. (2nd cousin once removed),
Richard “The Scarlet Spider” Wentworth, Jr. (2nd cousin),
Dr. James Clarke "Doc Savage" Wildman (3rd cousin once removed).
Lord Peter Wimsey (2nd cousin once removed)
Michael “Newman” Wiseman (grandnephew)
New Info
We have some new information on the more mysterious points. We did covered that Shirley Holmes' grandfather was Sebastian Holmes, not Mycroft as we erroneously presumed in a earlier issue.
We now suggest that there were not one but two criminals using the alias "John Clay", the twin brothers John Paul and John Thomas Clayton, sons of Sir William Clayton and Angel Bridget O'Shawnessey. Both reformed thanks to the efforts of Holmes and took their wives names, Luthor and Wainwright. "John Clay" did father both the Luthors (Lawrence "the Ultra-Humanite", Alexander "Lex", and William "the Scorpion", David "Daddy Warbucks" and Lena Thorul) and the Wainwrights (Henry King "Dr. Psycho", Alexander, "Odd John"), but "he" was most likely twins.
We also found that Holmes' nephew Richard seems to have married an Esther Rothschild, kin to Absalom Rothschild and Ruth Rothschild Jansenius, hence his son, Ellery, not wanting to profit unfairly by his parents' famous names changed his to Queen. That "Doc" Brown is not too distantly related to Werner von Braun and Ernest Rutherford (through Patricia Rutherford) shouldn't be too surprising.
The Great Detective Syndrome or fuermosi seems to have been epidemic, not only among Sherlock Holmes wannabes and imitators, but even with his own brothern, Sigerson, who advertised himself as "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother", but even more so his twin brother Rutherford. (We do not consider the suggestion that his brother Sherringford was the post-hiatus Holmes too seriously, because of the complexity of Holmes' time traveling, which will have to be gone into later.) Although the documentation on Rutherford's espionage activities for Mycroft abroad have been officially "lost", he and "Irene Adler" may very well have been the agents using the code names of Mr. and Mrs. Vukcic in Montenegro in the 1890s. He is also, more than likely, the "Sherlock Holmes" who fathered so many illegitimate children.
Mycroft Adler Norton
John Hamish “Nero Wolfe” Adler
Scott “Marko Vulcic” Adler
Shirley Holmes
Sherlock Holmes, Jr.
Minerva La Graine
Alice “Boomer” La Graine Loquot
Abraham Moth
The real Sherlock Holmes was a good uncle to their families:
Wolfe’s son, Spenser, and adopted daughter, Carla Luvchen
Scott’s son, Archie Goodwin
Sherlock’s son Sherlock, III, and Richard
Abraham and Jane Sherlock Moth’s son Arthur
and granduncle to
Shirley’s grandson Dan Robinson
Richard’s daughter Shelley
The confusion as to whether A. J. Raffles was the brother or father of Holmes' too-soon-dead bride, Marjorie, can be explain by noting that although A. J. Raffle's father usually went by his middle name, James, dropping the initial A. (Could it have stood for something like MacGyver's .embarrassing Angus?)
The confusion as to whether Violet Sherringford or Violet Clarke was the wife of Holmes' father, Siger, is easily resolved. It's both. We take it that Sherringford Holmes was the son of Sherlock's aunt and uncle, Mycroft Sigerson Holmes, Jr. and Violet Sherringford, but after Siger took his pregnant sister-in-law Levirite-like as his own wife he raised Sherringford, who would be the next squire, as a son rather than a nephew.
The marriages of the king of Dublin's great granddaughter to king of Denmark's grandson is the link to the more remote ancestors and that of Holmes legitimate daughter (implied by "Sherlock Holmes Illegitimate Daughter") to the father of John Grayson the link to the more remote descendants. The closest possible link between Holmes and Hornblower seems to be the marriage of Violet Clarke's father with Horatio's aunt, making the connection between Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock 16th cousins six times removed.
The theory has been proposed that Holmes is a Vulcan. We do believe there is evidence of a connection between the pointy-eared, telepathic Eldar and pointy-eared, telepathic Vulcans (perhaps via Gildor Inglorion and Solkar) so that Galadriel is, we calculate, Spock's forty-third great grandaunt and Arwen his second cousin forty-three times removed.
(See Peter Coogan's comment in the Hierogamous House Guestbook.